Survey: 89% of Hispanic Parents Using Smartphones to Help Them Buy This Back-to-School Season

CHICAGO, IL (August 18, 2016) – Retale (www.retale.com), a location-based mobile advertising platform for retailers and brands, today announced the results of its “Hispanic Back-to-School Mobile Shopper Report,” a commissioned survey examining the shopping behavior of Hispanic parents for the 2016 back-to-school season. The study, fielded between July 12- August 8, 2016, focused specifically on the use of smartphones while shopping, polling 500 Hispanic parents with school-aged children grades K-12.

89% of Hispanic Parents Use Smartphone to Help Them Shop

When asked whether or not they would use a smartphone to help them as they shopped for back-to-school-related items, 89% said “yes” while just 11% said “no.” In Retale’s 2016 Back-to-School Report of all consumers, 85% of parents said they would use smartphones to help shop during back-to-school season.

“In previous research, Nielsen has referred to Hispanic shoppers as ‘super mobile consumers’–a phrase attributable to high smartphone usage and mobile engagement across this demographic,” said Christine Cline, VP of Marketing at Retale. “Those findings ring true in our research as well, with Hispanic shoppers more likely than all consumers to support the back-to-school purchases with mobile devices.”

Hispanic shoppers said that they would select a store for back-to-school shopping based on the availability of deals or coupons on a mobile device slightly more often (90%) than all consumers did in our general population report (89%).

Breaking down which sorts of advertising are most influential to Hispanic back-to-school shoppers reveals this distinction further, as 36% of Hispanic shoppers chose deal/coupon apps as the most influential type of advertising, compared to only 32% from our general population study. Other top influencers included: television (17%), social media (13%), in-store signage (9%), newspapers (6%), and magazines (6%).

77% of Hispanic Parents Plan to Shop In-Store

When asked to select which percentage of their back-to-school shopping would be done in-store this year, 77% of parents surveyed said they plan to make at least 70% of these purchases in-store–just slightly less than the 80% of general consumers who opted for the same percentage of in-store purchases.

The full breakdown of how much shopping Hispanic shoppers plan to do in-store is as follows: 30% will do 100% of their shopping in-store, 18% will do more than 90% in-store, 29% will do between 70-90% of shopping in-store, 18% will do between 50-70% in-store, and only 5% said their in-store shopping would cover less than 50% of their back-to-school purchases.

When general consumers were questioned on their preference for accessing back-to-school deals on smartphones, the most popular methods were: “on the retailer’s own app or website” (36%), “through a dedicated app or website that aggregates coupons and deals” (27%), “on the product’s app or website” (19%), and “by receiving deals via text messages from retailers” (18%).

There were some notable differences here when compared to Hispanic respondents’ answers. Fewer Hispanic parents chose the retailer’s app or website as their preference for accessing deals, at 30%. Instead, more were likely to choose the product’s app or website (22%), or receiving deals via retailer text messages (21%), when looking for back-to-school savings. The percentage who chose a dedicated coupon aggregator was roughly the same at 27%.

“Retailers need to consider the full mobile landscape in order to amplify their back-to-school marketing efforts and achieve positive omni-channel performance,” said Cline. “Per our data, it’s important for retailers to have a presence across a variety of mobile platforms in order to maximize consumer reach and engagement.”

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